Australian rockers AC/DC sent many a head bangin' with the 1980 anthem, Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution. Renault is rocking a similar message, albeit without electric guitars, to push lagging electric-vehicle sales.

The French automaker, like sister company Nissan, is looking to alternative marketing strategies to get more prospective car buyers to consider electric vehicles like the Zoe, UK's Autocar reports. And that means, among other things, promoting the fact that EVs are far quieter than conventional vehicles, in addition to being emissions-free.

Renault marketing chief Stephen Norman tells Autocar that talking up the relative silence of EVs helps conveys the fact that such vehicles are well engineered in addition to being energy efficient. Part of the trick will be getting more people to test-drive cars like the Zoe, which started sales in Europe last month.

Nissan-Renault chief Carlos Ghosn raised eyebrows in late 2011 when he predicted that the two companies would sell as many as a half-million EVs a year by the end of the decade. Since then, though, Nissan and Renault EV sales have not reached numbers that would put the companies on track to hit that target. And last month, Nissan executive Al Castignetti admitted that Nissan was "a little bit arrogant" in its rollout strategy for the US, adding that the company needed to do a better job aggressively targeting potential buyers most likely to consider an EV.

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I've no idea where you mean by USDM, but the Zoe is due to go on sale in France in February, presumably with a more gradual roll out over the rest of Europe although I have not followed the details closely. If 'USDM' has something to do with the USA, the Zoe will not be going there, ever, so far as we know.

@SVX: That is AFAIK. I have not been following really closely. However the guys on the Zoe forum have not been taking any deliveries yet - or they would have been posting how the wait is over for them at last! (Fr) http://renault-zoe.forumpro.fr/

Trying to check my figures for French off peak electricity prices, I came across this major study of electric vehicles in France: http://www.internationaltransportforum.org/jtrc/DiscussionPapers/DP201203.pdf It is rather late here and I have not had a chance to properly take it apart, but it looks as though they have done some truly peculiar things to try to arrive at an unfavourable result for BEVs, for instance by assuming that nuclear power will not be what is mainly used to charge them, but coal and so on, as they seem to assume that people will charge at any time of day. That is only a provisional look at the paper though, I will try to look at it properly tomorrow. Lots of solid data in there though, so worth taking a look at.

Anonymous

2 Years Ago

@DaveMart

That's a very interesting report. However, I agree that it is oddly unfavourable to BEVs - for example it states that they use 2010 fuel prices for comparision. Oh for 2010 petrol prices again! Trevor MyRenaultZoe.com

France really needs to step up and provide some better EV incentive programs. Nearly 80% of France's electricity is generated by nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants are NOT very controllable as far as power output goes so they generate a massive amount of excess electricity at night that is just wasted. If they get more EVs, those EVs can soak up that excess power created at night that would otherwise be completely wasted.

The draft proposals for incentives are being greatly increased in 2013 from already very high levels: http://www.technologicvehicles.com/en/green-transportation-news/2088/french-bonusmalus-for-2013-from-minus-7000-to So not only do electric cars get a 7,000 Euro ($9125) point of sale discount rather than a tax rebate, but big gas guzzlers pay up to 6,000 Euros in punitive taxes. Imagine putting tax up to $7,800 on an SUV in the US! They also have a massive public procurement order, where they are going for around 50,000 vehicles in total for organisations such as La Poste. The Zoe sales will reveal all about how well it is all working, but sales to date just have not happened other than for the Twizy outside of the big public organisations. If not in France, then where? Perhaps Norway, with even heavier subsidies, but that is not going to kick start a mass market in battery electric cars.

With regards to incentives ... No amount of incentive will cause me to purchase a vehicle that is unsuitable for what I need the vehicle to do, and if those incentives are being paid for by an additional tax on the vehicle that I actually need then it's an additional cost of doing business. Electric cars in their present form and with the current (lack of) quick-charging infrastructure, do not do what I need a vehicle to do.

Brian: Renault are pretty well up on the charging infrastructure, as the Zoe has an AC/DC charger built in, which eliminates much of the sots of installing fast chargers. They will be able to charge at 22/44kw in a lot of places. I suspect what may hold French sales back is: 'Les grandes vacances', where the French go to the beach for several weeks in the summer. Since they all go at the same time, car hire would be impossible, and they want something to use getting there and back. Germany also has peculiar difficulties for battery electric vehicles, as with excellent public transport many of the journeys they do actually make by car are longer distance. If you add that to high electricity prices there and non subsidy, then the attraction of fuel cell cars becomes obvious, as does the lack of enthusiasm for battery cars.